The invention is concerned with improvements in or relating to fly tying devices.
In fly fishing the "fly", a bundle of coloured threads, wings, bristles, or other material simulating a fly, is tied to the fisherman's hook before the latter is attached to the line. Different fish and different fishing conditions demand the use of variant forms of "fly", so that there is a continuous need for the tying of "flies" to hooks during a fishing session.
Fly tying -- conventionally the winding of a silk thread round the assembled bundle and the hook -- is a fastidious operation and must be expertly and tightly performed lest the "fly" be quickly and irretrievably lost. For this reason use is often made of a so-called tying vice. This consists of a stem upstanding from a clamp and carrying a U-shaped bracket between the arms of which is pivoted an arm for receiving and holding the fishing hook whilst the "fly" is tied to it. The arm is usually a tube which is provided at the loading end with a collet chuck for receiving the hook and at the opposite end with a finger for opening and closing the chuck through an over-dead-centre toggle in the tube.
In use the vice is clamped to a table or other convenient support and the arm pivoted to the angle most convenient to the fisherman. The arm is then locked at this angle by tightening a wing nut on a bolt which spans the arms of the bracket.
However, in order to hold the hook in the most convenient manner to allow maximum accessibility to the fisherman, it is frequently necessary, not merely to clamp the hook-carrying arm in one position, but to change that position in the course of the fly-tying operation. Preferably, the position change will require the hook to be inverted as well as including a change of angle of the arm. Provision for such adjustment normally requires two clamping means to be provided, one to locate the arm firmly in a selected position in a pivotal movement about a horizontal axis and the other to clamp the arm in either a normal or inverted position.